Returning to Belarus and finding a country still in Chernobyl’s shadow

John Brannen is touring Belarus for the month of November and chronicling the human stories evolving from Europe’s last dictatorship, the remaining fall-out from Chernobyl and the rise of democracy. Follow his Canada.com exclusive work right here.

As a kid, I remember having a book called Great Disasters of the 20th Century. Every once in a while, I would turn to a creased part near the end of the book where the pages were full of scribbled notes and highlighted paragraphs. The chapter was ‘Chernobyl – 1986.’ The accompanying photos showed workers eerily dressed in rubber suits, staring blankly at the smoldering remains of the power plant.

This disaster is why the child victims of the worst nuclear accident in history left their homes to spend summers in Canada, some of them at my house. My age, we were kids from opposite sides of the world and only one of us really knew what a nightmare was.

Belarus rarely registers as even a blip on Canadians’ radars. A land-locked country in Eastern Europe, it received most of the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. About 60% landed in Belarus while the rest landed in Ukraine, Russia and the rest of Europe. Farmers, workers, their families and children were uprooted and their livelihoods, destroyed. The Soviet and post-Soviet governments did their best, but did not have the resources to offer support and long-lasting care to victims of the disaster.

But thanks to the efforts of Belarusian diaspora in Canada, the Canadian Relief Fund for Chernobyl Victims in Belarus (CRFCVB) was formed in 1989 “to provide medical and humanitarian aid to the people of Belarus who continue to live each day amidst the radioactive pollutants of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.”

For over ten years, children from contaminated areas of Belarus stayed in our home each summer. In Canada, their immune systems received a respite as they ate healthy foods, breathed healthy air and had Canadian medical care.

In some amazing and serendipitous way, our family in the Southwest corner of Nova Scotia is forever tied to these now-young adults half a world away. Up to six children stayed in our home at any given time. We shared in their joy and sadness, their pain and grief and over time they became a part of our family. And why? Because my parents saw an ad in our local newspaper soliciting funds for the CRFCVB, but decided they could do better and opened up their home, as well as their wallet.

Clothing stores, grocery stores, dentists and physicians were all eager to help these children, not just in Nova Scotia but all across Canada. It was a great example of that often idealized Canadian zeal to help those we’ve never met simply because we have the means and desire to do so.

Now a generation of young people are, in a way, as much Canadian as they are Belarusian.

From November 3 to 28, I will travel to Belarus to visit those who called Barrington, NS, home for many summers. With them, I will travel this gem of Eastern Europe through Minsk, Homyel and the town where the CRFCVB began to help Belarusian children, Chavusy. On November 18, I will cross the border into Ukraine to visit the place that forever changed these then young children’s lives – Chernobyl, and the abandoned city of Prypiat.

I invite you to join me as I travel to Belarus, to meet the people who are forever indebted to the people of Canada for opening their hearts and homes to give hope to the hopeless. We’ll see the places where they live, work and play; the things they do for leisure; the foods they eat; the arts and architecture; their government and politics, and; their challenges in living in a post-Soviet state still under the shadow of the Chernobyl Disaster.

John Brannen is touring Belarus for the month of November and chronicling the human stories evolving from Europe’s last dictatorship, the remaining fall-out from Chernobyl and the rise of democracy. Follow his Canada.com exclusive work right here.

Day 1: After the Chernobyl disaster, hundreds of children came to Canada to escape the nuclear fallout. Some of them found themselves living in John Brannen’s childhood home. Now, as an adult, he’s returning to visit those old friends in Belarus, and exploring what Chernobyl means to them today. Read the full story here.